Quite a kerfuffle. Especially the part about the show dates being up in the air in the aftermath.
I can only imagine the amount of headaches involved in changing the location for the two May shows at the last minute. For both management and exhibitors.
Agree. I brought up the water source because someone mentioned the large amount of water used on golf courses.
Thanks. I wasn’t aware that Coastkeepers was behind the Showpark shut down.
Interesting.
It’s terrible. I felt like part of me died when Showpark closed, albeit temporarily. So many wonderful memories there and was overjoyed when it reopened.
HITS (however else I feel about them) invested a lot to get Showpark back up and running.
That said, I do miss the County shows and the random non-USEF shows that used to happen at the facility.
Reclaimed water is also used for pretty much all landscaping in most of Southern California due to our water scarcity issues and seasonal cycles of drought. Including landscaping use at these big horse show event facilities.
But what we are talking about here, and what the Coastkeepers sued for, is the runoff during our short rainy season (Oct/Nov/Dec - March/April or May depending on the El Niño current cycles in the Pacific Ocean).
And it was shown at Showpark and other facilities that it’s really the upstream houses, roads, golf courses etc that are the biggest sources of pollution. Yet the Coastkeepers is still going around suing or threatening to sue horse properties . Whoever wrote up thread that there should be a counter lawsuit is probably correct, in the sense that horse facilities are being discriminated against and being selectively targeted. Pretty sure a ton of runoff pollution is also coming from all the boats that founder of OC Coastkeepers is in to (see the Boy Scouts boat theft scandal here:
They still have county shows there. They just call it Del Mar Horsepark now.
https://gsdhja.org/wp3/schedule/
HITS did a nice job upgrading the showgrounds.
However it was sad (for me) that the Del Mar National Horse Show wasn’t held at the fairgrounds this year, and was at Showpark instead. Ali Nilforushian spent a lot of money on design and reconstruction of the seating, and created attractive VIP areas in the fairground’s indoor ring. Other improvements were made too. The National is a USEF designated Heritage Competition and it belongs there. I hope some day it will return to its traditional home base.
Oh I went to Del Mar as a kid in the mid 1970s, when it was all one show and you could watch Arabs, Stock Horses, Fine Harness etc in one session, and then they’d put up jumps for HJ for the next session, etc. AND it was during the Fair. My mom would drop me off in the morning, and my dad would pick me up after work. I’d buy a program and keep track of the class placings, make notes about the horses, etc.
That sounds like a perfect day!
I remember it well!!
Most recent update in an email from USEF.
Contrary to what I’d heard clearly some managers bid on the dates perviously held by the Oaks.
Might make an interesting study on the effect of the mileage rule with shows running at Oaks+Showpark or Oaks+Temecula on the same weekend.
There’s a calendar in the link.
So were all of those shows originally scheduled to be at San Juan Capistrano? (The Oaks/Blenheim?)
I think so.
Here’s the PCHA calendar that (at this moment) shows the original calendar which was three June shows, two July shows, and two September shows.
Will see what I can do with wayback machine and Blenheim’s website.
UPDATE - Which turned out to be nada, but their calendar currently shows the original July and September shows.
This looks like an exceptionally good compromise. Am I reading this correctly? So, USEF is relaxing the mileage rule to provide competitors at least one show on those weekends (stating that this gives competitors some place to show, in case TRG can’t meet the expectations on time, etc)? That looks like a massive outbreak of good judgement, creativity, and a few other things in short supply these days. Hope I interpreted this news correctly. And yes, good test of the mileage rule.
A relevant Facebook thread
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?id=593042872&story_fbid=10162192544022873
And another FB thread. (this one with Kathy Hobstetter as the OP)
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid03gsyP8KsvWWjupDJYKdY6df1J1gUQs23HL4XJECDEKmMHEULzdEBQ3ptBonv7ySKl&id=1385239932&mibextid=cr9u03
Should be an interesting summer. Sometimes it seems like USEF likes to experiment with California shows. At least USEF spread the dates out between the three management companies in SoCal that can realistically run shows in June thru September at the available venues. Thermal is out of the question, though Burbank and Temecula can both get pretty toasty and the end of September into October can bring some of our hottest weather. Temecula has more shade and less concrete than LAEC. Unfortunately Del Mar Fairgrounds are occupied with the fair and then racing through the fall.
So… has anybody in California gotten a refund from Blenheim for the deposit on the May shows in San Juan Capistrano that got shut down by Coastkeepers and were moved to Los Angeles?
Blenheim gave us ONE day after the Los Angeles announcement to request a full scratch refund… which our barn all requested and we got an email back from horse show management saying it would be processed after June 20.
Well… it’s now July 1 tomorrow.
We sent emails this week starting June 23 asking about the refunds, and crickets.
They are currently back running shows in San Juan Capistrano on a Coastkeepers extension agreement with the lawyers and this horse show week is completely full. Both the May shows ran in LA.
This is not giving me a lot of confidence about the professionalism or fiscal integrity of the horse show event management company run by our Team USA coach…. Shouldn’t these refunds have been processed by now?
Thoughts?
We went to the show…and still are waiting for prize money checks to arrive. I believe USEF says prize money needs to be paid within 30 days. Others I know have said that their prize money checks bounced. Not a good situation…
You were told the checks would be processed after June 20, not paid on June 20. It hasn’t even been two weeks yet. How many refund checks do you estimate need to be processed ? How many people do you estimate are doing the processing ? Blenheim has been very good to the horse show community for years. Let’s give them a little slack while they work on this.
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